


Fear Sickness

by Kalaiscope



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Introspection, M/M, basically it's just bertl being a sad child, it's up for interpretation, this isn't actually all that shippy i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:17:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalaiscope/pseuds/Kalaiscope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're terrified.</p><p>The fear lives in between your organs, in your chest, in your throat, in your stomach, cold and clammy. It spreads to numb your limbs, making you clumsy. You're laughed at. It's all in good nature of course, they couldn't possibly know its anything but you adjusting to your height, but when Reiner laughs too it stops being a little thing and starts to seem more like a parasite.</p><p>You feel sick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear Sickness

**Author's Note:**

> i don't know where i was going with this...,,,
> 
> i just really like bertholdt as a character, because he's really kind of lame and a coward and he's still like a kid, and even his crowning Moment in chapter 48 was kind of just him admitting that he knows what he's doing is wrong, and that he's a coward, but then going ahead and pushing the blame somewhere else same as always.
> 
> i dunno, i guess just like that he's not a strong character. especially when everyone around him is badass, and he's just kind of... not.
> 
> (this is entirely un-beta'd, so there's probably a lot of typos and choppy wording. i apologize in advance.)

There's something wrong with him. 

Of course, there's something wrong with you too, so maybe your judgement is off. Maybe you're just imagining things. They say paranoia is your middle name, after all. Still, you've known him nearly as long as you can remember, long enough to know how what he's like and how his brain works, long enough to be able to guess what he's thinking at any given moment. Long enough to know that something doesn't feel right. 

 

It's little things at first, the sort of comments that make you frown in puzzlement. He forgets things. How to heal himself. How to run without losing his breath. Stuff you've told him not days ago, where he doesn't seem to know what you're talking about. Like all this training with other humans is slowly pushing out the memory of everything you went through before, replacing it, changing out the codes in his head for new ones.

 

He forgets the name of your hometown. He forgets your real last names. He forgets about you altogether sometimes. You're always with him, almost always, afraid to leave him alone (be left alone) and thats how its always been, but then he'll turn around from some laughing conversation with the other trainees and see you, and his face looks so confused, like for a little while he'd forgotten you existed, and... 

 

It hurts a little, but mostly it scares you. You're terrified.

 

The fear lives in between your organs, in your chest, in your throat, in your stomach, cold and clammy. It spreads to numb your limbs, making you clumsy. You're laughed at. It's all in good nature of course, they couldn't possibly know its anything but you adjusting to your new height, but when Reiner laughs too it stops being a little thing and starts to seem more like a parasite. 

 

You feel sick. 

 

The closer the day of the disbanding draws, the worse it gets. You wake in the middle of the night, tangled in your own sheets, disoriented, sweating, chest heaving. The mattress next to you is empty and cold. Icy air burns your lungs when you stumble outside, clutching at yourself to still the shakes and tremors, the ground biting at your bare feet, find him standing with his arms crossed and his back turned to you. Statuesque.

 

He doesn't look like a warrior from here. He looks like a boy, alone, unsure of where he's going. He looks lost, and he looks fragile, and that scares you more than anything you've witnessed yet. Because Reiner is the strong one, Reiner is your safety, the armor to your exposed flesh, and if he breaks... You don't know what will happen. It might be worse than death.

 

When you come up behind him, he turns, unfazed, and just looks at you. Takes in your bare arms and slowly numbing feet, the sleep pants that don't quite reach your ankles. He doesn't speak. You want him to, but you're not sure you want to hear what he'll say. So before he can speak, you kneel down in front of him, ducking your head to expose the back of your neck, staring at his feet and listening to the sound of your heartbeat as it stammers faster than you could ever run. This is your plea, your silent cry for help. What you've been far too afraid to do or say until now. Unspeakably meaningful in its simplicity. It feels like years drag on while he stands there unmoving, but you've never been good with telling time. Not since...

 

Hot fingers brush across the vertebrae at the base of your neck, and you nearly pass out from fright. Sturdy knees enter your field of vision as he crouches, matching your posture, and runs his thumb up to your hairline. You shudder. He knows.

 

"I'm scared," you tell him in a hoarse whisper, but he doesn't answer. "Reiner, I'm scared. I want to go home." When you hesitantly raise your eyes, he's looking back at you with an expression you, for once, can't read. Blank. Distant.

 

"Yeah," is all he says. "I know." And his body feels colder than you remember when you throw yourself against his chest, sobbing in relief because he didn't ask you what you meant by 'home' when all your friends are here. His grip is strong though, his fingers pressed hard against your spine, muscles solid under your sweat-sticky touch. He doesn't pull away either. He doesn't pull away, but you can feel his distaste. "Let go, Bertl," he tells you at length, "you're making my shirt wet. It's too cold out for this." Impatience is clear in his voice, the same gruff mannerisms you've always known, but it isn't reassuring. There's a distance between you still that no amount of tears or begging will ever close, a rift torn by something neither of you really understand.

 

You trail behind him back to the cabin, and he lets you hold his hand in your own slightly damp one. He even lets you curl against his back once you lay down, but when you start to shake again, you feel him sigh. "Go to sleep. If you're too tired for training tomorrow, I'm not helping you." So you try, you really do, and even when you feel your eyes and nose burning with tears, you don't cry. If you cry, he'll leave, and right now you need him too badly. 

 

The Reiner you remember is strong, but compassionate. He'll smack you a bit if you start to snivel, but when you're really struggling, he never wavers in his support. This isn't the Reiner you knew. This is someone else, a boy who believes he's a soldier. He's happy though, most of the time, and when you see all the other trainees who smile and laugh and joke even with you, it's not hard to see why he'd want to be one. You cant begrudge him that. Sometimes even you wish this fallacy could be true.

 

You never forget though, you never forget what you came for, even when you're so terrified you want to scream. And Reiner is strong, but maybe he's not as strong as you. Because something is wrong with him. Something is broken. You're heading down a path from which there is no return, no salvation, and he promised he'd be there every step of the way, but now it's starting to seem like he cant keep that promise. And you will never be able to manage without him. 

 

If Reiner can't make it to the end, you think, then it's alright if you both die. You don't WANT to die, but you know there are worse things. The promise of being freed from a fate you can't escape sounds like bliss to you, and you're used to pain enough by now that you can almost pretend the final blow will be nothing. There is no hell you can imagine that's worse than what you've already been through. 

 

You'll go as far as you can down this ever-narrowing path, because you're afraid of the consequences if you dare to stray, afraid of the darkness and the pain. But should you come to the end and find no armored protection... Then, so be it. You'll gladly walk into the arms of death. 

 

You don't really want to be alive, anyway. Not if you're alone.


End file.
